Continuing Professional Education. CPE credits.

If you are an Actuary , an Auditor, an Certified Public Accountant (CPA), a Management accountant, a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), a Financial Risk Manager (FRM) or belong to any other community of Certified or Chartered professional membership body, you have a continuing professional education (CPE) credit requirement.

Most bodies require members to obtain between 30 – 60 CPE credits every year for the right to continue holding your professional designation.

The challenge is finding interesting, relevant and engaging courses that you can take online ideally on your desk or laptop. A great CPE course in the financial services and financial reporting world:

a) Teaches you something absolutely new, that you would have never tried out on your own.

b) Is authored or presented by industry or domain experts who you can reach out to for clarification, mentoring and guidance.

c) Employs an engaging, interesting order using real life case studies.

d) Gives you the choice to move back and forth between materials and spend as much time as you want to digest and comprehend the concept.

e) Make full use of self study guides, templates, take home exercises, videos and self assessment

f) Is significantly cheaper than hopping on an airplane, checking in a hotel and taking two days off to attend a seminar. (You would certainly enjoy doing that but you would rather spend the extra two thousand dollars on a four day break of your choice)

g) Gives you the option to submit a detailed case study or test set for assessment by the CPE provider so that you get an independent verification of how much material were you able to internalize and learn.

As an Actuary with more than a decade of post qualification experience I have faced this challenge every year. What should I now do for my CPE certification? Is there any interesting enough offering out there that can still engage and teach me topics that I would like to explore. Learn something new and fulfill and comply with the CPE code at the same time?

Figure 2 CPE Online Training Credit Topic & Course Choices

Continuing Professional Education CPE Credit Package.

After 3 years of testing, feedback and content development, our Continuing Professional Education Credit Package is finally here. We listened to your feedback and suggestions and have created something that is interesting, exciting, practical and affordable.

Why do we think so? Let’s take a quick look.

CPE Credits. Why us?.

Figure 3 CPE Credits – Why should you take a second look at our CPE Solutions

We picked topics that we wanted to study. We also realized that without a realistic, interesting hands on case study, any teacher can kill an online class after a full day at the office.

To ensure retention, the best possible tool is to engage students and ask them to build Excel templates that illustrate concepts covered.

If they get lost or tired of working with the self study guide, provide them with relevant videos.

If they are not sure about how well they did with the sample test bank, give them a detailed hands on case study and provide an option for independent assessment and feedback.

CPE Credits – Fresh from the Financial Crisis world.

If you are not familiar with this world, getting up to speed is an uphill task with any of the above topic. This by the way, is just the initial list. We picked this list and knocked it out because this where the biggest demand is in the live training market. If you are interested in attending a live workshop for the above topic, you would certainly be interested in an online CPE edition on the same topic.

Our CPE course make extensive use of PDF study guides and Excel templates and where available related subject matter interactive video lectures. For our 12 month package buyers we also provide free access to up to 2 hours of interactive chat, Skype or phone support with a subject matter expert who can answer questions related to the material you have purchased. Sessions need to be scheduled in advance at mutually convenient slots.

Hands on Model driven training with a killer edge.

Our training model is based on 15 years of live training experience in the real and academic world. It impacts how we approach writing study guides, how we create assessment questions and the design and structure of our Excel templates and video lectures. It has been tested and tried in over 150 workshops across Asia Pacific and Middle East with audiences involving bankers, risk managers, regulators, relationship and account managers, auditors, operations and technology professionals. In the academic world the material has evolved and grown with active usage by Executive MBA students in Dubai and Singapore.

Figure 5 CPE Credits – Self Study, Excel, Video & Assessment Options

Our Secret Sauce

How do you create an offering that meets NASBA’s QAS requirements, the Society of Actuaries CPD Attestations, CFA Institute and Garp’s detailed content driven guidelines. We have done two things that really distinguish us from the competition.

a) Our no limit content formula gives you unlimited flexibility in subject, topic and learning choices. After you purchase a bundle, we give you a set of courses to pick and choose from. Sample the courses and pick the ones you like and are interested in. Each course comes with its own schedule of approved CPE Credit hours. Use your choices to build your own mix of CPE compliance hours.

This way you won’t get tied down to a dreary boring topic once you get to the primary study guide.

b) Our individual detailed assessment model allows you to get independent assessment of if you have really digested and mastered the subject. Think of it as a difficult take home exam or case study that you loved cracking in graduate school. It allows you to benchmark yourself against our students and the rest of the world.

It makes the CPE Compliance certificate all the more valuable because you know what you really had to go through to get that grade.

Review the material and decide if you would like to opt for the individual optional detailed assessment choice.

If the optional detailed assessment is requested, we will share a test case study with you and will give you 30 days to complete and submit a solution in Excel. Your grade is based on an internal benchmark that will tell you how you have fared with other candidates who have taken similar tests and cases before you.

The shared case study is of the same but slightly extended standard as of a typical MBA or Executive MBA elective Finance course take home final exam. However rather than take 2 – 3 hours, the case study needs between 5 – 15 hours of dedicated effort to solve.

Some topics such as treasury management include materials equivalent to a full semester load of courses and have longer detailed assessment requirements.

For example if you pick Value at Risk, the combined CPE credit count with optional detailed assessment will be 24 CPE Credits. If you do the same with ALM, you will receive CPE credits for 36 hours.

Once you have purchased the CPE package, please indicate to us your choice of courses and CPE combinations. If you opt for the detailed individual assessment please indicate if you have a preferred area of choice on which you would like to be tested or would you like us to pick them at random.

It take us between 8 – 12 hours on weekdays to configure your access and process your request. On weekends and holidays depending on when your order is placed it may take as much as 24 – 48 hour to send you the initial invitation.

How does the CPE training process work – what do I do next.

After you complete you purchase, you will receive an email from your CPE facilitator providing you with a link, a userid and a password for signing in and using the CPE training portal. Once you receive the link, follow the process below to complete your certification and receive your CPE compliance certificate.

About the authorJawwad Farid

Jawwad Farid has been building and implementing risk models and back office systems since August 1998. Working with clients on four continents he helps bankers, board members and regulators take a market relevant approach to risk management. He is the author of Models at Work and Option Greeks Primer, both published by Palgrave Macmillan.Jawwad is a Fellow Society of Actuaries, (FSA, Schaumburg, IL), he holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and is a computer science graduate from (NUCES FAST). He is an adjunct faculty member at the SP Jain Global School of Management in Dubai and Singapore where he teaches Risk Management, Derivative Pricing and Entrepreneurship.